User:KimberlyKassis/sandbox

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content: Everything in the first paragraph is relevant to the topic. The second paragraph shifts focus and is harder to follow and connect to the ideas in the first paragraph. There is too much description about similar effects and not enough information about the actual effect. This makes it hard to understand the shock wave aspect of atmospheric focusing. This article could be strengthened by more examples of this phenomenon and less scientific jargon that isn't explained. The article does a good job of linking to other articles when discussing related topics and examples which is helpful, but the writing is overdone and hard to process since it is not very concise.

tone: The tone is neutral. when describing the Tsar Bomba test there is not show of support or dislike of this event. There are no viewpoints in the article, and it would be helpful to present different opinions on the positive or negative effects of this phenomenon.

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Atmospheric focusing occurs when a shock wave is produced and impacted by conditions in the atmosphere. Examples of this are seen during nuclear explosions and large extraterrestrial impacts from objects like meteors.

Atmospheric focusing from supersonic booms is a modern occurrence and a result of the actions of air forces across the world. When objects travel faster than the speed of sound, they create pressure waves that can be focused. Atmospheric factors present when these waves are created can focus the waves and cause damage. Planes can also create boom waves and explosion waves that can be focused. Consideration for atmospheric focusing in flight plans is critical. The wind and altitude during a flight can create environments for atmospheric focusing. When this is the case, the flight should not persist through these conditions. To determine this, flights consider a focusing curve. If the conditions are above the curve, atmospheric focusing can occur and there may be damage on the ground.

Meteors can also cause shock waves that can be focused. As the meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere and reaches lower altitudes, it can create a shock wave. The shock wave is impacted by what the meteor is made of, temperature, and pressure. Because the meteors need to have a large size and mass, there is only a small percentage of meteors that can create these shock waves. Radar and Infrasonic methodologies are able to detect meteor shock waves. These tools are used to study these shock waves and can help create new methods of learning about meteor shock waves.

Shock waves are focused and refracted horizontally by density variations in the atmosphere. They can have impacts in localized areas much further away than the theoretical extent of its blast effect. In large bombs, some effects may thus be found hundreds of kilometers from the blast site (such as in the case of the Tsar Bomba test, where damage was caused up to approximately 1,000 km away).

This effect operates similarly to the patterns made by sunlight on the bottom of a pool, the difference is that the light is bent at the contact point with the water while the shock wave is distorted by density variations (e.g. due to temperature variations) in the atmosphere. Variations of wind can cause a similar effect. This will disperse the shock wave at some places and focus it at others. For powerful shock waves this can cause damage farther than expected; the shock wave energy density will decrease beyond expected values based on uniform geometry (falloff for weak shock or acoustic waves, as expected at large distances).